


Affidare

by celluloid



Series: wandering mind [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Dark, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gaslighting, Gen, Guilt, Horror, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Manipulation, Manipulative Relationship, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Self-Doubt, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-09-28 08:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20423264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloid/pseuds/celluloid
Summary: “I could hurt you,” Peter points out. He could take his revenge right now, punch Beck in the face, web him up, then dig out his phone and call Rhodey— He doesn’t have Rhodey’s number. Call Happy. He could. It would be so easy.“You won’t,” Quentin says, smiling at him. It’s melancholic, and Peter can sense the loss in his tone. It makes no sense to him. “That’s not who you are.”“No,” Peter affirms.(Peter Parker and Quentin Beck hang out and have a good time. For real this time!)





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> I think updates might take a little longer with this one. When you go dark you want to get it right, you know? It's a fine line to walk.
> 
> Picking up right where [Abstrudere leaves off](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19777783/chapters/48218818).

“You’ll help,” Peter asks for security. He keeps looking off to the side, at the fence that encloses them. _This is a new home, _he thinks, _but bigger._

“Yeah,” Quentin affirms from above him. His arms move, and for a second Peter fears the loss of contact, but it’s really just one shifting upwards to the back of his neck to press his head further in. Peter accepts it, turning away from the fence to bury his face back in Quentin’s chest, like he’s the wall holding him up and he needs to stay as close as possible to it.

Peter leans in, trying to get his emotions back under control, inhaling as deeply as he can from his limited confines. He could break Quentin’s grip easily if he wanted to. Right now. They both know it, but he doesn’t hint as though he’s about to make any moves.

Then, finally, Peter speaks up again. “Why?”

“What?” he hears from above, and Peter realizes his voice has been muffled.

He leans back, testing the limits of Quentin’s bonds. They give easily; he isn’t being held captive, and he’s free to move as he wishes. Peter steps back from the contact, taking in a proper breath again. There are some tear stains left on Quentin’s shirt, he notes absently. Shit. “Why? Why are you helping me now?”

_There’s that gaze again, _Peter thinks, as Quentin clicks his tongue and stares right into him. Through him. Like he can see past his eyes, into his brain; like he does have a superpower after all and it’s to see every fold of the fucked up landscape that is now his neurology. “I told you before, way back,” Quentin says. “I like you.”

“So much that you tried to kill me,” Peter says. He’s desperate but he hasn’t forgotten everything. It’s hard to forget a gunshot whizzing right in front of your face, only there by virtue of your quick actions instead of blasting through your skull.

He can’t break eye contact, though. They’re the most intense eyes he’s ever looked at, even when Quentin was indisputably a friend, and he… he can’t look away from them. He desperately searches for something in that gaze but finds nothing, a wall barricading what Quentin’s really thinking, and absently thinks, _I wish I had that._

“You were in my way,” Quentin says. _You got in my way_ echoes through Peter’s head, the remnant of a dream he’d sooner rather forget but just can’t. “You aren’t now. What good would it do to hurt you?”

“I could hurt you,” Peter points out. He could take his revenge right now, punch Beck in the face, web him up, then dig out his phone and call Rhodey— He doesn’t have Rhodey’s number. Call Happy. He could. It would be so easy.

“You won’t,” Quentin says, smiling at him. It’s melancholic, and Peter can sense the loss in his tone. It makes no sense to him. “That’s not who you are.”

“No,” Peter affirms.

“I’m safe around you,” Quentin says, “so you might as well be safe around me. It’s not as though either of us can really go out now, either, right? I have an appearance to maintain at the moment. And judging by where I found you, I take it it’s not in your best interest to come into contact with other people.”

Peter just stands there, feeling awkward. Having no response, caught between offence and acceptance. The silence drags out and the more he reflects on it, he also feels dirty. Gross. Exhausted. And his stomach—

Quentin cocks his head, like he heard it, too. “Are you hungry?” he asks.

Peter stays still, some last gasp of self-preservation warning him: _he could still try to kill you. He could be lying. It would be so easy to poison you. He’s probably prepared for it…_

_No, _Peter counters himself. _He didn’t know I was coming. That wouldn’t make any sense. That’s being paranoid. It’s like what Sam said: if I can’t actually explain it, it’s probably not real._

He stays quiet long enough that Quentin takes back over. “That your bag?” he asks, nodding behind Peter. Peter turns his head over his shoulder to look at it. “Go get it, come inside. At least let me get you water or something. Tell me how you made it out here after my little home video made its premiere.”

A burst of rage flares up in Peter’s gut at the callous direct reference to his circumstances, and he’s sure it shows on his face, but he turns back to get his stuff and then goes to follow Quentin into the house. He can probably break something if he needs to, anyway. Get out, if that becomes an issue.

It won’t.

* * *

Tap water.

Peter holds the glass in front of him, both palms curled around its base. He’d made Beck drink a full glass first before accepting one for himself. Quentin had smiled at him at that and downed it with ease before getting a second glass and filling it up for him. Peter had taken a sip and, not sensing anything wrong, moved to go sit at the kitchen table - still within full view of the sliding glass doors through which they’d entered.

Quentin joins him, perpendicular, his own glass refilled. He looks at Peter skeptically before sitting down. “You sure you’re not hungry?”

Peter shakes his head.

“Of course you are,” Beck says, and that smile is back. “But you don’t want to risk anything now. Smart. But you’ll operate better once you have something in you, so maybe not too smart. Let me know when you change your mind.”

“Okay,” Peter says quietly, looking up at Quentin as he makes himself comfortable.

“So,” Quentin starts, “how’d you end up here?”

“I took a bus,” Peter says.

Whatever answer Beck had been expecting, it clearly wasn’t that. He levels a flat gaze at Peter, one that he just shrugs off. “A bus. From… where, New York?”

“DC. And two buses, technically.”

“And they just let you on?”

“No,” Peter shakes his head. “I had to sneak on both. But once I was there nobody said anything. I… I planned it out, I figured out the most efficient route, where to transfer, and then I just stayed quiet and now here I am. How did you find me?”

“I’m monitoring my surroundings. It’s basic security. What were you doing in DC? Why did you come here?”

Peter takes a drink. He still can’t read Beck. It’s frustrating, especially after his own personal - hallucinatory - version had been an open book to him, but he’s getting absolutely nothing telling him he’s in danger, so he keeps going. Tit for tat, right? He shares, Quentin helps him?

“After you outed me—“ The anger is gone, he notes. His voice is just dead now. Clinical. That’s what happened, nothing to be done about it at the moment, “A friend of a friend made a call. Someone picked me up. I hid with them. I’m here because it… felt right, I guess.”

“Where you were hiding was wrong?” Beck probes. It’s just a question. It’s really just a question.

Peter looks away for a second. His fingers drum on the tabletop, a nervous moment. He already feels bad about up and leaving Rhodey, especially after he shared so much with him - not just shelter but emotions, his past, his _best friend_ \- and that he’s been completely gone for days now without so much as a note or anything… It’s horrible. And in a sense, Beck is right: it was the wrong place for him. He’d been too restless, left too much to his own devices. But it also _wasn’t_. He _should_ have stayed. He couldn’t have asked for anywhere better, but he still left. Activity over passivity.

“It’s okay,” Quentin says, jarring Peter from his thoughts. He looks back up sharply and is met with sympathy. It completely takes him out of his musings, a clean reset, because he hadn’t been expecting that and maybe it means this _was_ right. “It couldn’t have been easy.”

That sets Peter on a new line of thinking. His head is foggy; Quentin was right, he really should eat something, he isn’t at full mental capacity and he doesn’t know how to navigate this, but he’s aware enough to find this present logical hole. “How can you be so nice about this now when you ruined my life? We talked about personal stuff. You _knew_ me. You _knew _what you were doing. How is it now that you’re… you’re just like…”

“Before?” Quentin asks, almost wistful. It throws Peter both off guard and into placation; it’s almost exactly what he felt through stages of his journey, as he got closer and closer. 

He nods dumbly.

Quentin brushes his glass to the side, leaning over the table, that much closer to Peter. He looks at him. Really looks at him. It’s all Peter can do to stare back. “All of that was real,” Quentin says. “Planning our fights against villains obviously wasn’t, but everything between just the two of us was. Everything I tried to help you with was real. I was a kid once, too. I remember what that was like. Why not help you with what I could?”

For lack of anything better to do - for lack of any response he could think up - Peter takes another drink of water.

He should really, really ask for something to eat.

“But then, you…” And he doesn’t want to finish the sentence.

Quentin seems to get where he’s going, though. “I never did anything to try to hurt you until you knew about my plans at the time. I told you I had contingencies. I followed through. Self-preservation isn’t personal.”

_But it was, _Peter thinks. _That’s the problem. It was so personal it completely broke me—_

Instead, Peter nods. He hadn’t had the dignity to tell Rhodey or even Sam about his own plan to fix himself, so Quentin’s already got something over him. He’s got no moral high ground here. He can’t argue.

Quentin looks at him again. “Are you sure you’re not hungry?”

And okay. Maybe it’s time to swallow some more pride. His head is starting to hurt too much.

“What do you have?” Peter asks, surprising himself with the slight quirk of his lips he can feel on his face. Like it’s funny he’s finally conceding. To the adult who knows best.

Yeah. It’s kind of funny.

* * *

“Can I ask you something?”

“You just did,” Quentin quips. Peter just looks at him incredulously, like he would any time Mr. Harrington made a terrible pun in class, and Quentin breaks at that, grinning. “Sorry. It was right there. Go ahead.”

Peter lolls his head back on the couch, opting to stare at the ceiling of the living room instead. They’re further away from the sliding glass doors now, more in the heart of this unassuming two-storey home. It’s bigger than Rhodey’s place. It’s insulated. He could get loud and nobody from the outside world would notice. There’s more room to stretch out here, too. Peter has an entire couch to himself; Quentin has the one perpendicular. His beer bottle sits on a coaster on the glass coffee table in between them; Peter still has just a glass of water he’s now mostly ignoring, not really full but sated enough and with no strong desire to wash down his first meal in days.

“Was it anything about me that drew you to me? I don’t just mean the glasses,” and really, they’re the last thing Peter wants to think about, “but me. Like when you say you liked me, when you talked about being a kid once…”

He looks back up, trying to get a read on Quentin as he takes in the question. Still nothing, but he at least looks like he’s thinking it over. Peter is a serious conversational partner, not just a kid to be looked after or entertained.

_Were you ever just that?_

_Sometimes, yeah, probably._

“I told you, back when we first met - one of the first things I ever said to you, actually, I think - that you should never apologize for being the smartest one in the room. I don’t think Nick Fury or anyone he was with had the faintest idea what you were talking about when the concept of a multiverse was brought up. You know that’s a lie now, but you rolled right with it in a way I wasn’t expecting. Definitely not for a high school kid. That was pretty endearing right away,” Quentin says, half-smile on his lips.

Peter blushes.

He honest to god can feel himself start blushing.

_What is happening._

Quentin seems to notice, judging by the way he’s started full on grinning in his direction, and Peter throws his head backwards again. “Should I keep going?”

“No!” Peter half-yells. He moves to sit up straighter, raising his head again, but he can still feel the heat on his cheeks and he _hates_ it. “No, I mean— no. I don’t, I don’t know.”

Quentin’s grin just broadens. “You’re still pretty awkward, too.”

Peter brings his hands to his face with such force he feels like he should have concussed himself. “Oh my god.”

Embarrassment aside, he does feel better. Because if he had to be so specifically targeted - even if it was over his connection to Mr. Stark - then at least it wasn’t totally in vain. At least it had something to do with _him_. 

“I think it’s my turn to ask you something,” Quentin says. 

Peter looks back up at him, first through his fingers, but he lowers his hands completely when he sees how serious Beck looks. And he finds himself… maybe afraid, again.

_It’s just a guy it’s just a guy it’s just a guy, _Peter desperately tries to remind himself.

_Is it?_

“Okay,” Peter says. His voice is far weaker than he’d prefer. It feels like all the colour has drained from him. The air descends on him now, heavy, like a fine mist. He half expects to see light green and blue smoke filtering through, a fog so obtrusive it wants you to know it’s man-made. The mood has taken a complete turn and he’s not entirely sure what to do with it.

This is where the mask and the jokes come in handy but he doesn’t have the option for either now, and it makes him feel completely exposed.

“What happened to you?”

And Peter doesn’t even know where to begin. “Do you mean after you pushed me in front of a train?” His back throbs at the memory. He absently has to wonder about the scars there. The other scars he’s accumulating. He’s still a kid this should not be happening—

“I didn’t push you. You put yourself there. I never laid a hand on you.”

“Except for when you tried to shoot me.”

He’s acutely aware of the danger, now. It’s a creeping memory: not that he broke in the first place, but _why_ he broke. _How_ he broke. It didn’t happen out of nowhere. He didn’t just start having bad dreams. It was from a person - and as much as Peter wants the first lies to be true again, he needs to remember that he’s with that person now.

“A little attempted murder doesn’t spawn this,” Beck says. “You willingly came to me knowing what I’ve done. If I’m going to help you, I need to know what happened that drove you to this. Because as much as I like you, as nice as it is to see you and not be fighting you: this isn’t normal, and you know it.”

Peter feels a chill seep through him, even though the home is climate controlled and also in California in the summer. There’s something about that initial phrasing. 

And, more pressing, is that he’s being asked everything he couldn’t get out to Sam. And he doesn’t know what that says about him, if he’s able to open everything up to the person who tried to hurt him, not the one who tried to help him.

But Beck is trying to help him, too.

So maybe that makes it okay.

“When I was hiding in DC,” Peter starts. “When… When calls were made and I got picked up. So I avoided everything after, after the video. I saw it and then I ran away and I avoided _everything_. I still don’t know what’s going on. I don’t want to know.

“But I was brought somewhere safe, and I started having dreams. Or maybe I was always having dreams but then I started remembering them after you outed me. Maybe it was a trigger. I don’t know how any of that stuff works… I just remember they were violent, and terrifying, and you were in them. You were killing my friends. Trying to kill me. And I couldn’t have those dreams again. So I… I stopped sleeping.

“I still couldn’t get rid of you, though. I thought… I didn’t sleep, and I started seeing things again. It was… I thought my friend was dead, I thought you were chasing me, I tried to— I—“ He’s told this part before, though. Not all of it. Maybe. But Sam knew what he’d tried to do to Rhodey. Did Peter ever say any of that out loud? He can’t remember.

“I thought you were one of the people helping me. Like, I hallucinated it was you instead of the actual guy. And I tried to shoot you, him, I got ahold of a gun and I tried to shoot him, in the head, right in the head, but it wasn’t loaded but I still did it. So. I started sleeping again, but the dreams kept happening and I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or if it was real or…

“And then you came back. In the dreams. In my life. Not always, at first. But then you were _always_ there. I’d be reading. Or making food. Or in therapy, literally in therapy, and you’d just be. There. And by then I _knew_ it wasn’t real but you were still _always there_ and you said I _wanted_ you there and maybe I _did_—“

When Peter looks back up - when had he looked down? His hands are fisted in his sleeves, he realizes, his legs curled up on the couch, like when he’d first started talking with Sam - he’s almost expecting to see his Quentin, finally looking at him with approval, _You did it, you idiot, you finally told somebody._

But instead he gets the actual Quentin, the Quentin he can’t read while he himself is spilling his guts. He’s being stared at impassively, analytically. Sam might have said something sympathetic to him, but Beck isn’t giving him anything.

“I got to Los Angeles maybe twenty-four hours ago,” Peter says quietly, looking back down at his tangled hands. “I don’t know. Time got fuzzy for a while there. But I… I thought I needed to come. I got a lead. Or a sentiment. I don’t know. But I had a feeling, and since I’ve been here I… I don’t think I’ve hallucinated once. I thought, I thought if I could find you, the real you, then the fake you would go away. He was just so _constant_ and a reminder I’m not okay and that I never will be—“

He has to cut himself off at that, before he starts working himself into hysterics. This is not the place. This is not the person.

“I never said a word of any of that in therapy,” Peter suddenly adds on, looking back up into Quentin’s eyes, direct eye contact and everything, surprising himself.

His stomach drops. Like out of everything he said - maybe he shouldn’t have said that.

“You’re the only person I’ve said any of this to,” he says again.

“You’re the only one who knows what you put me through. I haven’t told anyone any of that, either. None of the specifics. You and I are the only people in the world…”

And finally, Peter lets himself shut up, not out of self-preservation but out of simply running out of words.

But at least this time he isn’t crying.

Quentin lets Peter’s words hang over them, digesting them. When it’s clear Peter’s finally done, he asks, quietly, “You were in therapy?”

Peter nods.

“Did it take?”

_That’s… That’s kind of weird, _Peter thinks. “Yes and no? I think, I think some of it did. I was really— I was really a mess before it, I couldn’t tell what was real or not and I can do that now. I’m pretty sure. But beyond that…” He shrugs.

The silence drags back out. Beck’s frown deepens, and Peter can’t help but wonder if he’s done something wrong, made him upset in some way. _Maybe he’s been in therapy too, _he muses. _Maybe it was a bad experience for him. Maybe that’s why—_

“How long?” Quentin suddenly asks, cutting off his train of thought. Peter looks back up, straightens his body language, lets his legs drop. He stares back at Quentin, feeling tired, feeling the bags under his eyes, but somehow alert at the same time.

“What do you mean?”

“How long were you in therapy for?”

“Oh,” Peter says. “Like… a week. It was three sessions, all in a week. I was supposed to switch to weekly sessions today but I came here instead.”

“Does your therapist know? Did you tell anyone you were coming here?”

“No,” Peter says, clear, definitive. “You’re the only one who knows anything about me right now.”

And that’s… that’s a thought. He’s really shunned everyone he possibly could in favour of… what? Beck looks almost contemplative over the thought, and Peter thinks, well, it would only be fair to even the playing field, right? “Does anyone else know you’re here?”

Beck gives a soft little not-laugh at that. “Yeah. I try to avoid working totally alone. I’m laying low right now - Mysterio is dead at the moment, after all - but I’ve got people. This is actually a colleague’s place.”

Peter’s gaze sharpens at the bit of information he’s been offered, and what it implies: there’s still the potential of a threat. He could still be found out. Overwhelmed. Beck seems to read him pretty quick, though, and shrugs. “Don’t worry about it. Nobody drops in unannounced. And nobody will hurt you. It can stay just the two of us for as long as you want.”

_Mysterio is dead because Spider-Man killed him, _Peter thinks, and he suddenly becomes all the more aware of his web shooters on his wrists. He has those. He didn’t have them during any of the dreams. He has them now. He can still control the situation.

“I want it to be just the two of us,” Peter says, a hint of aggression working its way into his tone. Assertiveness. He has to assert himself, he recognizes. “Because everything has come from you. Every single thing that’s gone wrong during my summer is from you. You owe me. Just you, nobody else. You ruined my life and you _owe me_.”

He’s expecting to get into a fight. Not a physical one - Beck is too smart for that, they both know Peter will win with ease - but a yelling match, or something. And Peter wants to be past this. He wants to skip ahead to the part where everything is okay.

But Beck just leans back, relaxed. “I guess I do.”

Peter blinks, thrown off. His hands relax. He hadn’t even felt them tense. “Really?”

Beck snorts, a little half-smile crossing his face at the action. “Yeah. Any reason for us to be fighting is gone, but you’re still hurting. And I can’t keep saying how much I like you and then just leave you to suffer. If I’m to blame for any part of this and I’m the only one you feel comfortable with, then who else can you go to? I said I’d help you so I’ll help you. Just me. Just the two of us. Whatever you want.”

The acknowledgment and acceptance of his demand, that Peter might actually be getting what he wants - it feels almost like whiplash. He hadn’t known what to expect on coming here. It had been relieving and terrifying all at once. But as the hours have passed - he’s gone from late afternoon to midnight, and it’s so isolated here, the stars are completely visible in the sky, it’s absolutely nothing like New York or DC or Prague or any of that - he’s encountered dialogue, a willing ear, understanding and hospitality.

It’s almost like with Rhodey again, except so much more personal.

And more threatening, despite what Quentin says.

_You were the threat with Rhodey, _he reminds himself. _It’s only fair this time you’re threatened._

But he’s not - or at least, he won’t be. He’s going to make sure of it. He’s going to get the upper hand and he’s going to keep it.

“So where do you want to go from here?” Quentin asks, drawing Peter back to reality.

He has to pause. “I don’t know,” Peter finally says. “I don’t know how any of this works… I’ve just been acting on instinct. Now that I’m here, it’s run out.”

And a quieter part of him, begging: _You’re the adult you know what to do please do it._

“Okay,” Quentin says, standing up. “It’s getting late, you’re probably tired and, to be honest, you kind of smell. There’s a guest room upstairs. I’ll get that set up for you, you go take a shower, get as much sleep as you need, and we’ll revisit this in the morning. Sound good?”

Peter frowns at the shot towards his hygiene, but he can’t actually argue; after days on buses and an extended nap outside on rocks under the California sun, a shower sounds absolutely amazing. And that he can immediately draw parallels with what Sam said to him - about not going too fast, taking their time, doing things right - and that it’s someone else taking charge, someone he wants to, lulls him.

“Yeah, sounds perfect.”

* * *

Peter falls onto the bed and his eyes shut instantly.

At some point he’ll get back up and get under the covers proper. Actually put his head on a pillow. Get positioned for real sleep. But for right now, the chance to just lie down on something clean and soft carries its own wonders. He’d been clean before he’d left Rhodey’s. He’d ruined that by running through subway tunnels. It had felt exhilarating at the time, but this… this is nice, too.

He still has his web shooters on. He’d taken them off to shower but had constantly peaked out behind the curtain to make sure they were still there, one little bit of paranoia Peter figures he should hold onto if he’s going to hold onto anything. He can’t see himself taking them off again.

His bag is tucked up against the side of the bed facing away from the door. There are some items of concern - his suit, his phone - but neither really has any use now. The suit could get him killed. The phone, when he turns it back on - if he ever does - will only light up with messages of betrayal, of how much he hurt everyone who has his number by doing this.

He knows he screwed things up. He knows. Peter rolls over, digging his face out of the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. Too lazy to get up, he shoots a web over at the switch, plunging the room into darkness. That was stupid, he shouldn’t have done that, he has limited resources and he doesn’t know how any of this is going to turn out, what even the next day has in store.

But it’s quiet, there’s no present danger, and in the midst of his conflicting guilt and relief he just feels physically comfortable.

The unknown future is terrifying - but its limitless potential also offers a lot of hope, and he tries to use that to soothe himself, to further cement in his mind that he’s made the right call and it’s actually going to work out for _everyone_. Not just him. _Everyone._

Because his poor judgment had made him a liability. His traumatized mind had made him a liability. His being outed had made him a liability. And there has to be a way to fix all of this. There has to, or… what is he even going to do?

Peter shoots a look at his bag as though he can see through it, see his phone inside. And then he flips over proper, maneuvering himself under the blankets, coming to rest his head on a pillow as he stares at the closed door.

He can start to plan, at least, maybe. Beck went into his situation with contingencies. He’d clarified as much, repeatedly. And even though what Peter is doing isn’t on that same level - he doesn’t have an actionable goal - he can still try to move things in a fundamentally good direction.

Because there’s something there, Peter just knows it. Every time he told that sad lie about a family that didn’t exist he was tapping into something. Every time he put his arm around Peter or talked to him like a colleague, like a friend, like a mentor, there was something there. Even this entire night - it’s been scary, sure, but it’s also been relaxing. He hadn’t sensed anything off once. He hasn’t been in actual danger for a moment. Before things got serious again they’d been able to joke a little, he’d been on the receiving end of some of those verbal but friendly barbs, and sure, it was with an underlying tension beneath the surface but whatever basic goodness Beck possesses was still there.

And the tension will go away with time.

Peter’s not going to die. If there’s any one thing he’s confident in, it’s that. He has every single physical advantage working for him: he can overpower Beck, he can run away from him, he has the physicality and the flexibility and even if it ends up with him in jail or on the Raft or something he’ll still be alive, and as long as he’s alive, he’ll be able to figure something else out, some other way to move forward.

And that leaves every single possibility wide open for him to access.

It’s entirely possible that, by the end of this, Peter will be able to turn his phone back on and not feel guilt for abandoning everyone else in his life for one man who tried to kill him. Because Quentin isn’t going to do that anymore. He said so himself. The logic was sound. He has nothing to gain from Peter’s death. Peter can reason it out, so that means it’s real. Quentin is going to help Peter get everything back on track.

And Peter is going to help Quentin, too, whether he knows it or not.

Everything is going to work out. For _everyone_. He can sleep easy, knowing that.


	2. Happy Birthday

As he blearily cracks his eyes open, Peter has to remind himself this isn’t a dream.

He glances around as best he can without actually getting up. He hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep since the night before he left Rhodey’s. He knows that’s dangerous, but circumstances had called for it and… well… 

If anything, the cross-country trip helped emphasize for Peter just how much he can appreciate a proper amount of sleep in a proper bed. Pulling an all nighter to break onto a bus had been miserable. Sleeping for over a day on another bus had been miserable. They’re not as bad as staying up for four days straight and thinking you’re seeing your girlfriend’s dismembered body and trying to shoot your former mentor’s best friend in the head, but then again, few things are.

Peter rolls over, burying his face further into the pillow and shuffling backwards, slightly, digging himself further under the covers. It’s maybe a little too warm, but it’s so comfortable and he doesn’t want to get up. He’s reminded of Septembers past, when school was starting back up again and he’d try to get an extra five, ten minutes of just lying in bed whenever he could. It always drove Aunt May nuts. Uncle Ben would laugh—

Peter frowns. He turns further on his side and brings his legs up, not quite hugging them to his chest but making himself smaller. He thinks back on just the previous summer, when he and Ned would stay up as late as they possibly could gaming, a game of chicken before one of them would give up and tap out for the night. Sunrise was always a dangerous time: a signal that they’d maybe gone too late, pushed things a little too far, neither with blackout curtains and in for a miserable day whenever they finally did get up, only to be wide awake until the next sunrise.

_What even was the point of that? _Peter wonders. _That was stupid. _But he’s grown since then. Sure, it took a crisis situation, but sleep is all good in his books now. No more all nighters if he can help it.

It’s a lovely morning. Definitely one of his best in recent memory. And though the room has changed, no: he knows it’s not a dream.

He’s in a house in California with someone he barely knows and he’s just had one of the best sleeps of his life, and he feels astoundingly cozy and comfortable about it. There’s more natural sunlight in this room. The walls are a lighter shade. It’s bigger and less dreary, more open. He maybe doesn’t deserve something as nice as this - but he has it.

Peter rolls over onto his back, arms splayed out beside him. He inhales deeply, sighs, and sits upright, his knees coming up to join him, too. He brushes a hand through his hair, finding the one or two knots that have made themselves known, and yawns.

He looks to one side. The door is still closed. He looks to the other. Sun is streaming in, just a little bit, from the small gap in the curtains. He looks down; his bag is still there, and it looks untouched.

Peter stands up and makes his way to the bathroom he’d showered in the night before. He looks at his reflection in the mirror as he goes about a morning routine; there are still bags under his eyes and his hair looks stupid but otherwise he looks as he feels, completely relaxed and refreshed.

He makes his way downstairs, sparing a glance at the clock on the stove. A little after nine. That means it’s noon in DC. He’s over twenty-four hours late for his therapy appointment.

He finds he actually doesn’t mind that at all. He feels too good right now. Probably better than if he’d stayed out east.

“Mr. Beck? You there?” Peter calls from the kitchen. He makes his way over to the fridge, right hand clasping his left web shooter in plain sight on his wrist - short sleeves from an oversized t-shirt to sleep in will do that - and then vice versa, checking both. They’re fine. Operational. And then he sticks his head in the fridge, like he’s back at Rhodey’s, like he’s making himself at home.

Though this is his home, now, probably.

“_Mr._ Beck?” a voice says from behind him. Peter turns around, absently holding a carton of milk in his hand. “That’s a little formal, don’t you think?”

But he’d always— Mr. Stark had never objected— “Oh,” Peter says, a little thrown off. “What should I call you?”

“Just ‘Beck’ should be fine, don’t you think? Keep it short and sweet,” Beck says.

“Beck,” Peter tests it out on his tongue. “But that’s what I called you before… when you were trying to kill me and my friends.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Beck says. Peter stares at him. Beck half-laughs. “Obviously the attempted murder is. And that won’t be happening again. But having a reminder of what I’ve done is probably for the best, for the both of us.”

Peter thinks it over and finds he can’t really disagree. He knows that for as optimistic as he feels, he’s still treading in dangerous territory. And while on the one hand, Beck acknowledging recent sins is good, he thinks - he isn’t denying them or playing a victim, he knows he was in the wrong, maybe that means the potential for good for him really is a possibility - it also leaves Peter wondering if that means it’s possible to set Beck off again. If Beck is warning him of something.

_Maybe it’s not entirely his fault—_

“You doing anything with that?” Beck asks, snapping Peter back to reality. Beck nods at the milk in his hands; Peter looks back down at it.

“Oh,” Peter says, blinking. “I was thinking breakfast, but I don’t actually know what…”

“Cereal?” Beck asks. “How old are you?” He’s smiling, amused, but it’s not unkind. Really, how often did Mr. Stark smile at him? Though maybe he just wasn’t someone who smiled all that much. Or even Rhodey—

“Sixteen,” Peter says on reflex.

“That makes sense. Not much of a palette in the morning when you’re a teenager, right?”

“It’s just easy,” Peter starts to defend himself, a little flustered. “I kind of know how to cook, but I don’t know where everything is here yet and—“

“Relax,” Beck says, laugh on his lips. “I’m just giving you a hard time for no reason. Cereal’s fine, I like it on lazy mornings, too.”

Peter watches as Beck ends up showing him where the bowls are, where the cutlery is, where to look for what in the pantry as he gets everything else. He stands back, mentally taking everything in, almost a little spaced out by the domesticity of it all. He’s trying to keep a specific awareness of that sharpness in the back of his head - when he knows everything’s about to go wrong. When it’s dangerous. When he’s going to get shot. He’s got a metaphorical finger on it and everything, eyes always watching, just waiting for it to go off.

There’s nothing.

Peter finally steps forward when it looks like everything else is in order, still holding the milk. He passes it over to Beck as he takes his own bowl and pours his desired amount of cereal into it - modest, like normal, his stomach isn’t twisting itself into knots like when he was starving the night before - and takes it back when he’s ready, finishing by putting it back in the fridge.

Teamwork.

For breakfast.

Peter takes his bowl and his spoon and leans back against the counter, taking a mouthful. Normal, consistent meals again. A roof over his head, steady access to food, tucked away from a world that either wants his head on a platter or to pick his brain or just imprison him, no danger, no hallucinations, no personal failures, and no boredom.

Something’s looking out for him. Or someone. He looks over at Beck, who’s made his way over to the table like a normal person, and asks, “Are all your mornings lazy?”

“Hm?” Beck replies, question apparent around his closed mouthful.

Peter smiles to himself at the image. “You said you like cereal on lazy mornings. Are all your mornings lazy? Do you ever have busy ones?”

“Ah,” Beck says, setting his spoon back in his bowl. “I don’t have anything pressing right now, so I go at my own pace. Sometimes that means lazy mornings, sometimes entire days. I know you’re still pretty young, but I gotta ask: have you had that yet? Time entirely to yourself, no obligations, just doing what you want to do?”

Peter thinks it over. “Kinda? Maybe? Like, on summer vacation—“ _Except this one, _he lets go unspoken, but still, it permeates the air.

Beck looks at him. Peter’s still bothered by how he can’t discern what he might be thinking, at all. There’s no danger present to him but it’s still unsettling - at least, until Beck breaks into a small smile, almost regretful and humbling.

“You know you’ll have that for as long as you’re here, right?” Beck asks, and Peter can’t help but be taken aback.

“But what do you do?” Peter asks. He doesn’t know how Beck came up with everything he did before - just that he had drones, projectors, something to manipulate the environment to make it unbearably hot or weapons or everything and anything beyond what he can even begin to comprehend—

“Right now? I’m just messing around. See what sticks, what else I can develop. Do you want to see the lab here?”

“You have a lab?”

“Yeah. It’s not particularly fancy but, you know, circumstances. I can show you if you want.”

Peter does want. He very much does. It’ll give him something to do, something he hasn’t had since the last time he was able to swing about, open and free. He’s been so cooped up but at least with this he’d be able to exercise his brain.

But. And it’s a major cause for hesitation.

“I do wanna see,” Peter says, “but first I have to know… what do you work on in there?”

Beck shrugs. “Standard stuff for me. Drone modification, checking for new efficiencies. Same with projectors. Writing new code, playing with models and seeing what else I can create. Sometimes dismantling and reassembling. It’s like a playground, you’d probably love it.”

A playground. A scientific playground. Peter wants this _so bad_, but Beck doesn’t seem to be picking up on the anxiety that’s trying to poke its head back above the surface.

“I would,” Peter starts, “but the place where you make illusions… stuff that’s not really there… and me…”

He feels so small. For all his self-pump up talk about how he can easily get the upper hand or at least escape if he has to, it doesn’t feel like that’s an option anymore.

Beck catches on. He looks down to the side, bites at his lip for a second.

“I get it,” he says. “That’s on me.”

“It does sound great,” Peter tries to placate immediately. “It sounds like exactly the kind of thing I would love, you’re right. But I don’t know if I _can_. I don’t know if…” And oh god, wait, what if none of this is real? What if they aren’t even in a house right now? He stares down at the bowl in his hands; that definitely feels real. He takes a bite of his increasingly soggy cereal; that is _definitely _real. It’s not possible to fake that. He thinks.

Something in his body language must have tipped Beck off, because he suddenly asks, “Hey. Are you still with me?”

Peter’s head shoots back up, eyes a little wild. Beck is still sitting at the table; he looks like he wants to get up and move over to Peter but also knows that’s just not a good idea, that any actual, physical movement from him right now could send him over the edge.

“I don’t know,” he says, eventually.

Beck sucks in air through his teeth, a wince. “It’s that bad, huh?”

“I came here. On my own. Willingly,” Peter says. He puts the bowl down. He’s not really hungry anymore. Breakfast seems so trite.

“Point taken,” Beck says. He still hasn’t moved to get up. Peter’s grateful; he really doesn’t know what he would do. “Look. You came here for my help, right?”

Peter nods, dully, like he’s not really entirely there.

“So let me help you,” Beck says. “It doesn’t have to be right now. I’m not going to force you into anything. You let me know when you’re ready, and only then. All I can do is give you my word, and I know, coming from me, that doesn’t really mean much right now, but maybe one day it will. In the meantime… You let me know.”

The words are nice, Peter thinks. It’s nice that Beck is taking responsibility. It’s nice that he isn’t pushing Peter into anything. And it’s really, really nice that a door is being left open.

He’s having trouble coinciding them with an empty New York, a dive off of a building, a graveyard, a zombie. 

But maybe one day. Because Beck is right on that level: that’s the entire point of this, isn’t it? For him to help?

“Thank you,” he finally says.

Beck nods at him. “Do you need to lie back down?”

And suddenly Peter feels exhaustion seeping in. His arms relax; his legs want to follow but he won’t let them, not until he’s back in bed. He got more than enough sleep last night but it’s like his brain needs a reset. “I think so, yeah.”

Beck shoots him a sad smile. “That’s one of the nice things about having your own schedule: sleep whenever you want. Go ahead. I won’t bother you.”

Peter nods, and with another parting thanks, heads back to what’s become his new room. A hand on each web shooter, checking they’re still there. So is his bag. And he falls back on the bed and blanks out.

* * *

He wakes up maybe an hour later, still morning, still tired but filled with a need.

It’s not an urgency, really. And there’s still nothing telling him he’s in danger. But he listens and can’t hear any activity in the house. He crouches under the window in his room, only moving up just enough so that his eyes are above the sill to look out over a detached garage, possibly with some noise originating from it, if he strains his ears. And in a place like this - nothing fancy, like Beck had said - that makes as much sense as any for there to be a lab there.

Which means nobody else is in the house. It’s just him.

And he should, at the very least, take the chance to look around.

Peter dumps his bag’s contents onto the ground, ignoring the muffled thump his mask makes when it - phone still inside, still off - makes contact with the carpet. He shifts things around, eventually settling on a plain black t-shirt and almost tactical-style black pants. All black. For sneaking.

_Thanks, Rhodey, _shoots through his head for a second, giving him a brief new stab of guiltbefore he pushes it out of his mind. Nothing to be done about it now. Nothing except making it all worth it, that is.

He checks his web shooters again. They’re maybe about half full; he can work with that for the time being, he thinks. Maybe if he can work up the courage to go to the lab…

Peter leaves his room and makes his way towards where he assumes Beck sleeps. 

And finds absolutely nothing of interest.

It’s really just a room. And Peter checks: he ducks his head into every corner, behind and underneath all of the furniture, any possible hiding spot. The room is bigger than his but that’s really about it. Nothing under the mattress, nothing in any depths of the closet, nothing in its attached bathroom, nothing. He even jumps up on the ceiling for an additional perspective, knocking on parts of it to see if there’s anything hollow-sounding, and there’s absolutely nothing.

Bemused, Peter jumps back down and goes through the rest of the upstairs. Nothing. He makes his way to the ground level and, still not hearing anything, combs his way through the kitchen, the living area, the small spot where the washing and drying machines are tucked away and it’s easy enough to check under and around everything when he can lift everything in this house with ease and… absolutely nothing.

It really is just a normal house.

Peter looks over at the clock on the stovetop and finds it’s already past four in the afternoon. Seven in the evening in DC; Rhodey would probably be getting home around now (though maybe not anymore, now that he has someone to look for; and Peter thinks, if Beck can take responsibility for what he’s done to Peter, Peter can accept responsibility for what his actions might be doing to Rhodey and Sam and anyone else who stuck out their neck for him now). He feels awake and satisfied and safe from his search, and maybe now a little hungry; there’s a bowl of apples lying out on the countertop and he takes one.

Peter shoots a look out in the direction of where the garage lies, though he can’t see through walls. He looks back out the glass doors that lead out into the backyard and he chews thoughtfully. 

He’s going to have to confront things at some point, he knows. And at least now he feels good, confident…

He finishes the apple, throws the core away, washes his hands, and steps out into the backyard.

The last time he was outside he was wearing his suit and a giant hoodie, had just slept on rocks, and was an emotional wreck. Now he’s clean and, though a little on edge, feels good again.

He looks around, noting the shelter from the fence, the trees, and the relative silence living on the outskirts of a city seems to provide. _Nothing like New York, _his mind supplies. Frowns as he feels the grass beneath his feet as he steps off the deck, remembers his only form of footwear here are the boots from his suit, and ducks back inside to get them, for lack of better option. Because walking around outside barefoot still makes him a little queasy - but in a lab? That’s just poor safety.

The main garage’s door is shut - of course, it faces the outside world - but the side door is open. Peter knocks tentatively on the edge as he steps inside, hugging the entrance, some of his nerve vanishing as he reconsiders stepping all the way in.

Beck looks up from the far end of the lab - and it is a lab, it’s a garage and it’s cement flooring but it’s clean and organized with a number of different workstations set up throughout, each with its own projects and - and honest to god beams at him.

Peter offers a shy smile back. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Beck replies, more enthusiasm in his tone as he sets down whatever he was working with and stands up straighter. “You made it!”

“I made it,” Peter affirms, voice not really as strong as he’d like it to be but at least with enough volume to carry. He looks around a little; nothing really seems like an illusion. “Is it safe?”

“Yeah,” Beck says, dusting his hands off and making his way over to Peter. “Everything is what you see. Do you want to look around, or…”

Peter steps further in, not quite meeting Beck but at least making his way to the closest workstation. He runs his hand over the table’s surface, making sure of its presence. He doesn’t really touch anything on it - he doesn’t want to set any of it off, and also, it’s not really his business - but it’s at least real.

Beck stops and watches him. Peter looks back, his grin slowly broadening. “You were right,” he says. “This is cool.”

It’s more than anything he’s been around in his life, his brief forays around Mr. Stark’s technology aside. He used to quietly make web fluid in a drawer in a high school chemistry class; this place has a ton of computers and there’s so much more wiring and machinery and tools, so many tools, and Peter thinks Mr. Stark would probably find this place lacking but for him it really is a candy land.

So much so that he’s willing to step further into the lab, mindful of the safety bumps that must be covering the wires running along the ground, feeling the surfaces of all the other workstations. He only really stops and his grin only really falters when he comes to the station Beck had just been at, where a drone is lying, half assembled. He looks back up at him.

Beck shrugs. “It’s offline, obviously,” he says. He’d stood back while Peter had given himself his own little tour, but makes his way back over once it’s clear Peter’s back with him. “Everything in here is.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. Nothing seems out of place. Peter knows he can’t necessarily tell for sure - that’s the entire point of it all - but he’d been starting to in the end, he thinks. If anything, it just means he isn’t going to get hurt, physically.

“Do you want to look into it?” Beck asks, gesturing at the half-assembled drone before them. Peter can see the wires dancing through and everything, a maze of circuits with the power to completely undo him, lying harmlessly before him. “Maybe that’ll help. I know it can hurt you, but when it’s like this, it really can’t do anything.”

Peter consults that sense one more time. It remains as quiet as ever. He shakes his wrists, the web shooters remaining an unfailingly reassuring presence. Half full on ammo.

And then, “Yeah.” He picks it up, bringing it up to his eye level, and peers into its guts. Rotates it in his hands. And looks back up at Beck. “What were you doing with it?”

“It stopped working after it mistimed something and dinged a mountainside. I went in to get everything back and connected and replace any damaged parts but now I’m just messing around with it while I’ve got it open. You can consider it yours, if you want. Take a look inside. Tell me what you think.”

Peter stares back in it again, not even knowing where to begin or how to make any sense of its innards. He looks at the rest of the workstation, the screwdriver lying nearby that Beck must have been using before Peter came in. He turns the drone over in his hands again, looking at what he’d probably dub its “face”, if it had one. He looks back up at Beck. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“No?” Beck asks, curious. “Did you want to learn?”

Peter thinks back on past conversations. An idolization of Mr. Stark, how one of the suits he’d given him had been built with robotics specifically in mind. How he’d made a new suit of his own and it doesn’t have that at all, his own intuition telling him what he’d need, how he should be able to move. An impulse offer to Rhodey, give him four years at any post-secondary and he could master it, Rhodey telling him to focus on himself—

“Maybe someday,” Peter shrugs. He puts the drone back down. He never would have considered any of that - any of it - if Mr. Stark hadn’t entered his life. “If it comes up. If I even can.”

“You can as long as you’re here. Whenever you want to,” Beck says. It’s a quieter moment, but he gives Peter an honestly curious gaze, like when they’d been in Prague together and— just before he’d convinced him to give up the glasses— he asked Peter what he really wanted. It’s odd, Peter thinks, contrasting those moments, but if there’s an ulterior motive here he can’t figure it out. “What are you really interested in?”

“What am I interested in?” Peter parrots.

“Yeah. Like what’s your real love?” Beck asks. He laughs a little at Peter’s look. “I saw the way you went through this lab. It isn’t anything special but you looked like you want to live here. You can always tell when someone’s in the midst of something they really love. So where would your focus be? No restrictions, no limitations, no schedule or obligations or anything. What do you want?”

Peter ducks his head at some point; embarrassed at the way Beck seems to be nailing him in ways he hadn’t even considered. It’s a good embarrassment, though - like when someone you really look up to looks back at you and— he’s been through this before. With Beck, specifically, even. But if it happened again… That’s gotta make it real, right?

“Chemistry, I think,” he says, peaking back up from under loose hair that’s managed to fall a little wayward. He might be due for a haircut soon. That might not even be possible.

Something lights up in Beck’s eyes at that. “Chemistry’s great,” he says. “I never really took to it, but anything you need, I can help you get.”

Peter blinks and his brows furrow as he looks around the garage-turned-lab. “Oh yeah,” he says, distracted by that new train of thought. “So if you can’t really go outside, how do you have all of this stuff?” He has to pull himself back - remind himself he isn’t even close to being out of the woods here yet. Any reason he has to question anything, he needs to take it.

Beck seems fine with it, though. “I told you, I’ve got people,” he says. “It’s almost impossible to do things on the scale I was going for on your own. I need something, I just let one of them know, they get it for me and bring it here. It makes it a lot easier to lay low. You had people helping you do that too, didn’t you?”

Peter nods absently. “I guess,” he says. “So like, any chemicals or materials I might want…” Peter turns his wrist over, looking at the web shooter on it. He won’t have to run out of fluid. Hell, he might even have the freedom to experiment, make it stronger…

“Just ask,” Beck says. He follows Peter’s gaze. “So, can I ask what’s the deal with those?”

Peter looks up, snapped out of his reverie, a daydream into how he can emerge from this in an even better place than he would have thought possible, that everything really can be turned into a positive, that things actually did happen for a reason. Beck laughs again at his expression. “Every time I’ve seen you today you’re looking at them. What’s up?”

“Oh,” Peter says, feeling heat rise up his cheeks. He should maybe be more careful about that, then. Or— Maybe he can’t, now, now that Beck will know something about them, but at least when he’s asking for a list of materials he can throw a lot of red herrings in there. A lot. There are some things that will always be just for him and this will definitely be one of them. “They’re my— I don’t have webs, you know? But spiders do. So I made these, and I need to make the webs for them, so…” And he shrugs.

“I remember that,” Beck says. “Just never saw them out in the open before. You always had your hands gloved.” He cocks his head, his eyes narrowed. “May I?”

“No,” Peter says, probably with the most confidence he’s felt in— since he laid out a plan to tell MJ his feelings. Even more than that. It’s a good feeling; he knows he’s at least retained a sense of agency. Boundaries. He wonders if he would have ever let Mr. Stark really take a look; thinks it’s a good thing he never really had the chance to find out.

He blinks at himself in surprise of that thought, like it came out of nowhere, as Beck backs off and just says, “Fair enough.

“Did you still want to look around at everything else here?”

And Peter grins at that, because now that he’s really starting to settle in… Getting to go through an entire lab, one he can apparently co-share, in depth? Yeah. Yeah, he wants that.

* * *

“It’s late,” Beck says, stretching his arms above his head, fingers interlocked, barely suppressing a yawn.

Peter looks up from under the magnifying glasses he’s wearing, tweezers in one hand, hovering over a circuit board. He’d been the picture of full concentration until that moment. “Is it?” he asks. He doesn’t know how much time has passed - just that it’s probably been at least a couple of hours, the sun seems to have gone down at some point, and he’d gotten engrossed in what he could find in the lab, falling into a quiet working environment alongside Beck after he’d shown him a thing or two he had previously been unfamiliar with.

(It was also nice to note that Beck had a fair bit of what he’d need to make more web fluid already there - though he’s going to be left in limbo while waiting to put a proper order in. But at least it gives him the chance to ask for more stuff he doesn’t need, try to keep the process as quiet as possible.)

“Yeah,” Beck says. “It’s past midnight.”

“Huh,” Peter says, looking back down at his board. He doesn’t feel tired, but there is a sense of curiosity pricking at him. “What day is it?”

“The 11th.”

Peter freezes at that. He quietly sets down the part the tweezers were holding on top of the board, not where it should be going but just putting it down before he does something stupid. He puts the tweezers down. He pushes the glasses up on his forehead, not quite off, and stares, unseeing, at the workstation before him. “The 11th? Just now?” he asks, quietly.

“Yeah. Why?”

He looks up at Beck for a second; he’d gravitated to another station across from him, a bit closer to the exit. Their eyes meet and Peter has to blink back down, away from that questioning stare. “Yesterday was my birthday,” he says. Maybe mumbles. There’s a coldness creeping through his body, his previous enthusiasm - he could have gone all night, he really could have - out in a single shock to his system.

It probably shouldn’t be that big of a deal, he thinks. It’s just a birthday. But for the last one Ned had come over, they’d hanged out all day, Aunt May had cooked dinner and had surprised him with a very spidery-looking cake she’d decorated herself and it had—

Oh god, because Rhodey has probably talked to someone at some point, Happy at least, and he would have talked to May, and maybe Ned or MJ had asked and none of them even know where he is and he’s good, he’s fine, he’s happy but he and Beck are the only people that actually know and he’d just let the entire day pass him by completely unaware—

“Shit,” Beck says. Peter goes through the motions, lifting the glasses completely free from his head and putting them down on the table. “How old are you now? Seventeen, right?”

“Seventeen,” Peter affirms. No emotions. Just another number.

“Headed into senior year?”

Peter nods dully, a single, short movement of his head.

“Big year,” Beck says. He gets up, moves back over to Peter’s station, pulls up another stool to sit beside him. “You doing okay?”

“I think so,” he says. It’s not that difficult to operate with that shock coursing through him. It’s just a chill now. The rest of him is still there, things are just cold and numbed to the touch, but he still has his head about him. “It’s just different.”

“You’re still pretty young,” Beck says. Peter looks up at him. He looks quiet, almost contemplative. “Birthdays mean a little less when you get older, but technically this is your last year before you’re an adult… I get it.”

And because it’s an avenue Peter sees, and because he wants to stop feeling so cold for a second as past birthdays spent start to worm their ways through his mind, he takes it. “What were you like as a kid?”

He’d never gotten the chance to ask Mr. Stark that. He figures Rhodey probably gave him a lot of insight - more than most would ever get - but still, it might have been nice to hear. Have a frame of reference. Because if this is really it, if he can feel adulthood creeping up on him on top of everything else he’s got going on—

Beck looks at him, like he can see the motivation behind his question, but he takes it anyway. “Probably not that different from now,” he says. “A little quieter. Definitely geekier. I know I don’t know you that well, but maybe more like you than you’d think. Physics was more my thing than chemistry. I was on the robotics team in high school; didn’t really build anything that impressive - not like what you’ve got going on - but it set the stage for me in university. I lucked out there; not everyone knows what they want to major in right away, but I think I knew and, well, I was pretty close.

“What are your plans for school? Do you know yet?”

On some level, Peter can see what Beck is doing - he’s turning the conversation away from himself, back to Peter - but it makes sense, really. It’s not like Beck is going to give story after story after story about him; Rhodey was able to give him a couple of isolated moments but even then, it was a lot of generalizations. That’s just how answering questions like that works: descriptors, not life stories.

He’s also able to catch the present tone Beck uses, and it puts him at ease. _Does he know yet. _Because he’s still going to be able to go to university in the end. Beck isn’t reneging his promise: he said he’d help Peter, and part of that will be helping him get back to a normal life. Graduate high school. Move on. This is just the start of that process.

“Not really,” Peter says. “I was so busy with all of the superhero stuff. Like, my grades are still good. New York has a lot of good schools so I always thought I’d get into one of those, and at some point I’d probably do grad school, do a new study or invent something new or something… But that all seems far off in the future.”

“It’s not that far off,” Beck says. “Though I understand. General sciences isn’t a bad place to start, see what you like before you commit to something.”

“You think I’ll be able to do that?” Peter asks. “Even with everything…”

It’s one thing for Peter to talk in an abstract, he thinks. He’s going to do X, Y, and Z in the future, years down the line. It’s another thing to remember he’s a sixteen— seventeen-year-old kid who still has to take the necessary steps to get there first. Only now it isn’t a step or two to climb, it’s a cavern to cross.

“Yes,” Beck says, making direct eye contact. 

Peter looks back, then rubs at his own, sniffling for a second. “It’s just so much harder to see that now. It was even before Spider-Man was outed, but now… How do I even set foot in public again?”

“We’ll figure something out, trust me,” Beck says. He gets up then, moves to pull up a stool beside Peter rather than continue to sit across from him, and leans forward so he can match Peter’s position. His head had dropped, but now it’s just a matter of a simple tilt, looking to the side, only that much warmer with the new proximity. “I’m in a similar position as you: I’m supposed to be dead now. Can’t go outside until we’ve got a new story. And that was never quite my forte - which is why I work with someone who’s good at that sort of thing.”

Peter blinks. “The elemental stuff? That wasn’t your idea? The dead family and everything you said when we first met…”

“Not my idea, no. It’s hard to pull something of that scale off on your own. That’s why I worked with a team of people; that’s how I’m able to do what I’m doing here and now. My guy is figuring out what we can do next. I can ask him to work you into that, as well.”

“That would be… That would be amazing,” Peter says. He sits up straighter at that; Beck follows his movement. “You would really do that?”

“That’s part of helping you get better, right? Not just the psychological stuff, but the stuff outside of your brain, too.”

Peter nods. He feels… not quite invigorated, but a little less exhausted, at least. Less cold. Like he still can’t tell what the future could possibly have in store for him, just that there probably is a future.

One in which he can see his aunt again. Because oh, god, it really was his birthday yesterday and she probably just spent it worrying over him— After she’s spent so long worrying over other people, and that just wasn’t fair to do to her—

“Hey,” Beck says. Peter’s suddenly aware of his hand on his shoulder, shaking him lightly, bringing him back to reality. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I was just thinking about my aunt,” Peter says. Beck’s hand retreats and he kind of wishes it hadn’t. “It’s not that I’m seventeen now or that I’m so caught up in things I didn’t even know it was my birthday. She’s done everything for me and I know why I can’t contact her, I know right now it’s probably for the best I don’t, but a year ago she was celebrating with me and now she doesn’t even know if I’m still alive.”

He takes a shuddering breath. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah,” Beck says.

“I know a lot of the stuff you said at first was made up, but the wedding ring… the dead family… was any of that true? Did you lose anyone?”

Beck sighs. He looks forward, away from Peter, and ducks his head down, staring at the table before them. “No. That was just a part of the story.”

“Where’s your family now?”

Beck shrugs. “Dunno. Sometimes you just fall out of touch with people, Peter. It’s a part of growing up.”

Peter worries at his lip. “Does it have to be? Is it like that for everyone?” He’d love to find a positive frame of reference here, but he can’t think of— Of all the Avengers he’s talked to, are any still in touch with their parents? Have they been able to keep their families? He think he saw something about Hawkeye once, but he’s not sure that really counts; that’s a bunch of kids who haven’t grown up yet. And even his own teacher was telling him about his wife leaving him. 

The other alternative - the one he knows all too well - is that people just… die.

“Not everyone,” Beck says. “But it’s still something that happens. Why, are you worried about it happening to you?”

“Maybe,” Peter says. His breath shudders and he runs his hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up, pushed up from his forehead. “I just don’t really have that many people left, and I know that even if you help me, I still might not. But it’s just…”

And then he pushes himself back from the table, stool legs scraping a bit on the floor, and he gets up and starts pacing a little. Beck doesn’t get up to follow him, but Peter looks up occasionally, sees that Beck is still watching him. “I remember my birthday from a couple of years ago, when I turned fifteen. A few months before then my uncle died. Was murdered. And it was kind of my fault; I let the guy who did it get away. I had my powers then. I could have stopped him. I didn’t. I was so caught up in my own bullshit that I let a bad guy get away and he ended up killing my uncle.

“But it wasn’t just that… I stayed caught up in my own bullshit. I tried to find the guy who did it, since the police never did. And I found him. And I… I’m strong, right? But I didn’t know how strong I was back then. Or maybe I just kind of, like, selectively forgot… I took him to the hospital though. After. And I remembered my uncle would have hated that. So I didn’t do anything like that again. And the next time I saw a bad guy, I stopped him, I didn’t let him hurt anyone else and I didn’t let him get hurt.

“So school gets out, right, and I suddenly have all this free time to myself. So I did the only thing that felt right: I patrolled the city. Every single day. I ignored everyone in my life, I just focused on, you know, stopping petty thieves and I helped people get out of car wrecks and I just… I did good.

“But then my birthday came around, late in the summer, you know the date now, and my aunt got to me before I could go out for the day. And I tried to just get past her, because she was keeping me from my job, right? And she wouldn’t let me. She made me stay and talk to her, and she was crying,” and Peter can feel himself starting to cry a little again at that, nothing too bad, but his voice wavers and there’s more moisture at the base of his eyes than there was before, “and she wanted to know what she’d done wrong and what she could do to make things right. Because I got so caught up in my own bullshit again that I’d ignored her for months. And I didn’t realize when my uncle died that she’d lost someone, too, and that I was her only family left - not even by blood, but still, family - and I’d abandoned her, too.

“So I stopped. After she sat me down I stopped. We spent the day together. And we spent my entire sixteenth birthday together. And I’ve spent a lot more time with her in general, because I couldn’t do that to her again. And now I have.”

He stops pacing and turns to look back at Beck, who hasn’t moved from Peter’s workstation. He feels like he’s worn a hole in the floor from his pacing. Or like he should have. Or like he could, right now. He’s at least managed to stop himself from crying, though, eyes just a little damp, sore from overuse and exhaustion and guilt, because he’s truly just had a great day - or at least the last eight or so hours of it, he’s had an amazing time, he hasn’t had a full lab to play in before and he knows now it’s something he could happily spend the rest of his life doing - and it’s now ruined because he’s regressing.

“Peter,” Beck starts, but Peter shakes his head, and Beck falls silent.

“You know what the worst part is? It isn’t that I did it again. It’s that it’s so easy to do. I fell right back into that habit without a second thought, and I know I’m going to keep doing it for as long as I’m here, because it’s so easy. But I can’t not be here - even if I ignore everything else, if I go back to her, I— My brain— I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I won’t be safe to be around, you might be the only person I can be around and she’ll never know and I got my uncle killed and I’ve left her with nobody and birthdays suck, Quentin, this sucks I don’t want to be seventeen I want to go back to before _all of this_—“

He stops when he suddenly feels hands pressing down firmly on his shoulders. Peter looks up, coming back to reality, at Beck’s face. It’s still as unreadable as ever to him, but he thinks he sees sympathy there. Or maybe he’s just tired. It’s late. Maybe they’re both just tired.

“Peter,” Beck says, his voice as gentle as he’s ever heard it, “you’re spiralling.”

Peter averts his gaze, embarrassed.

“You’re having a breakdown right now you don’t need to be having. Things are bad right now. I get that. There’s no immediate solution, but there’s also no need to make things worse than they are.”

Is Peter doing that, though? He’s pretty sure everything he’s saying is right. And maybe Beck can help him get his life back on track, but he’s still ruining every other relationship he has, progressively getting more and more alone with each passing birthday, until one day everyone will just be dead or gone.

But Beck had promised he’d always be in his corner. That he was the only one who could possibly be there for Peter now. That was Beck, right? Or was that just his own mind? He looks up at Beck, his hands still on his shoulders. It had sure looked like Beck. And he’d _promised_.

And he really had had a good day until just a little bit ago, and he’d spent so much time with him…

“It’s late,” Beck says. “Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning.”

And Peter just nods dully, because that sounds right, and he’s pretty sure Beck knows what he’s talking about here. He’s the one with the life experience, after all.

A thought crosses his mind, so brief he can barely grasp it: Beck turned out okay, didn’t he? He’s what, like twice Peter’s age? More? And he doesn’t have a family, but he turned out okay, right? So maybe he can, too.

They make their way back in the house, Peter a step behind Beck. He chances a look up at the night sky. It’s a little cloudy, but the air is open and fresh, and he thinks he can hear the ocean from here. He misses New York, he misses _home_, and this environment isn’t exactly conducive for his favourite means of transportation, but it is nice.

It is a good spot.

Beck stops in the living room. Peter passes him, headed for the staircase, before he really notices. He turns around to see a troubled expression on his face.

“What’s up?” Peter asks. Maybe he should be worried. Or maybe he can help.

He’ll probably feel a lot better if it’s something he can help with.

Beck looks back at him. “I just thought of something,” he says, voice quiet. Peter had gone up a few steps; he goes back down to be a little closer, to properly hear him.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not sure if I should tell you right now. I could be wrong.”

That gives Peter a sinking feeling, but now his curiosity is piqued. He tries to wipe his face clean of any expression, to not appear concerned. He’s almost an adult now. Legally. And he doesn’t have time to act like a kid anymore. “What is it?”

Beck looks like he’s still uncertain about actually finishing his thought, so Peter takes charge. “Tell me. I promise, whatever it is, I can handle it.”

That seems to spur Beck back into action. “This is just a guess. It could mean nothing. Please don’t stress over it.”

“Okay. What?” Now Peter really needs to know.

“You’re seventeen, right? So you’re at an age schizophrenia can start to manifest.”

Peter’s mind goes blank for a second.

Then he says, “Oh.”

“It’s just a guess,” Beck says again. “Nobody is diagnosing you right now. You probably don’t have it.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Probably.”

And Beck was right, like, an hour ago at this rate. It is late. It’s well past the time he should be going to sleep. The high from working in the lab all day has well worn its course. And sleep is important. Peter knows this. Not sleeping leads to hallucinations. And paranoia. He had a lot of that before. He knows this.

Everything can be tied back to Beck, though. To Mysterio. Everything. Even the parts when Beck wasn’t there, and it was all just Peter’s actions, Peter’s decisions, Peter’s thought processes, Peter’s brain - it all originated from something Beck did.

_He knows this._

But it still takes a long time to fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Tags may be added as they become relevant. In the interims, I'm over at miikkasakari.tumblr.com.
> 
> This is being [translated into Russian](https://ficbook.net/readfic/8748477) by the wonderful an_vasy!
> 
> (Currently on hiatus, if that wasn't obvious - I will return to this at some point but some other fandoms have co-opted me for the time being.)


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